Army is looking to use discoveries from quantum mechanics to improve navigation, healthcare and communication on the battlefield, harnessing principles at sub-atomic levels to develop more powerful computing, communication and sensing tools.
To achieve this, Army collaborated with industry and academia through the Army Quantum Technology Challenge, held at this year’s Chief of Army Symposium in Melbourne.
Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Doherty, who heads the initiative, said it helped Army find best uses for the technologies and how they affect land warfare.
“We want to build sovereign capability and leverage Australian research to gain and keep an early quantum advantage over our adversaries,” he said.
One company, Q-CTRL, is developing quantum sensors for GPS-independent navigation.
GPS relies on satellite signals, which can be jammed or spoofed. Q-CTRL proposes devices that measure motion, gravitational anomalies and changes in the Earth’s magnetic field to provide accurate location data without satellites.
Stuart Szigeti, a quantum physicist from Q-CTRL, said it would be passive and wouldn’t give your position away.
“The idea is to sense changes in gravity and the Earth’s magnetic field as you navigate, and then compare those to a reference map. That will give you your location, completely independent of GPS,” Dr Szigeti said.
Another system works by tracking speed and direction with a quantum accelerometer as you move.
When moving without navigational equipment, the uncertainty of your position gets larger.
“Provided you know your starting position, the quantum accelerometer keeps that uncertainty smaller for longer, so you can track your position more accurately without GPS,” Dr Szigeti said.
‘We want to build sovereign capability and leverage Australian research to gain and keep an early quantum advantage over our adversaries.’
Michael Barson, of Monash University, who also works with measuring magnetic fields, said his research focused on improving radio signal detection.
Quantum magnetometers can detect low-frequency magnetic fields, even through dense mediums like earth and water, where radio signals are typically blocked.
“The magnetic field doesn’t get attenuated as much as electric fields and normal UHF fields,” Dr Barson said.
This could offer new options for communicating in difficult environments.
His research also aims to detect and determine the direction of radio transmission.
“With a single device, you can determine where a radio frequency is coming from. You don’t need triangulation. It’s a vector magnetometer, so it measures the x, y, z component of the magnetic field,” Dr Barson said.
Army is also interested in quantum technology’s medical applications, with CSIRO proposing scaled-down versions of devices like mass spectrometers to develop portable diagnostic tools.
Liam Hall, a quantum physicist from CSIRO, said equipment traditionally large enough to fill a room – costly and requiring expert operation – could now be scaled down to fit in a hand.
“We mix the serum or saliva with nanodiamonds, shine laser light through it, and the diamonds fluoresce based on the magnetic field they’re measuring, which gives us information about the biomarkers,” he said.
Dr Hall said that this technology could be used to monitor a soldier’s health when access to a pathology lab was not available.
